[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 6]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 8506-8507]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                  HUMAN RIGHTS PROBLEMS IN KAZAKHSTAN

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, May 16, 2001

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call attention 
to the lamentable human rights situation in Kazakhstan. On April 4, in 
a meeting with Kanat Saudabaev, Kazakhstan's new Ambassador to 
Washington, I welcomed his desire for cooperation and his willingness 
to improve his country's image, but I emphasized that Kazakhstan's 
reputation has indeed been badly tarnished and that concrete actions, 
not implausible pledges of democratization, were necessary. Considering 
the recent political trends in that important Central Asian country, I 
would like to share with my colleagues a number of the concerns I 
raised with Ambassador Saudabaev.
  As a Washington Post editorial pointed out on May 1, President 
Nursultan Nazarbaev has recently been intensifying his longstanding 
campaign of repression against the political opposition, independent 
media, and civil society. Especially alarming is the escalation in the 
level of brutality. In the last few months, several opposition 
activists have been assaulted. Platon Pak of the ``Azamat'' Party was 
stabbed on February 7. Fortunate to survive, he said his attackers told 
him to ``deliver their message to the head of his political party.'' On 
March 1, Ms. Gulzhan Yergalieva, the Deputy Head of the opposition 
``People's Congress of Kazakhstan'' and a well-known journalist, was--
along with her husband and son--attacked and robbed in her home. Prior 
to these incidents, both opposition parties strongly criticized the 
Kazakh Government's running of an electoral reform working group. In 
late February, Alexandr Shushannikov, the chairman of the East 
Kazakhstan branch of the ``Lad'' Slavic Movement, was beaten by unknown 
assailants in the town of Ust-Kamenogorsk.
  Less violent harassment of the opposition has continued unabated. 
Amirzhan Kosanov, the Acting Head of the Executive Committee of the 
opposition Republican People's Party of Kazakhstan (RNPK), found 
threatening graffiti in the stairwells of his apartment building, on 
the doors of his apartment, and on neighboring buildings on March 17. 
Later that night, hooligans threw rocks at the windows of the apartment 
of Almira Kusainova, the RNPK's Press Secretary. In one case, a large 
rock shattered one of the windows.
  To add insult to injury, Mr. Kosanov has been barred from leaving 
Kazakhstan. He is the former Press Secretary of Akezhan Kazhegeldin, 
Kazakhstan's former Prime Minister and now the exiled head of the RNPK. 
Claiming Mr. Kosanov had access to ``state secrets,'' the authorities 
have confiscated his passport--even though he had left Kazakhstan many 
times before. To round out the campaign against Mr. Kosanov, a series 
of articles and reports in pro-government media have accused him of 
adultery and pedophilia.
  In addition, Pyotr Afanasenko and Satzhan lbrayev, two RNPK members 
who were Mr. Kazhegeldin's bodyguards, were sentenced in April 2000 to 
three years in prison for a weapons offense; an appeals court upheld 
the convictions. The OSCE Center in Almaty has stated that it considers 
the charges to be political in nature. Moreover, these two individuals, 
as former members of the security forces, should be in special prisons 
instead of being incarcerated among the general prison population, 
where they are in danger.
  Along with the targeting of opposition activists, the ongoing 
crackdown on freedom of the press has continued. Most media outlets 
have long been under the direct or indirect control of members of the 
president's family, leaving independent and opposition media under 
constant pressure and at serious risk. After the opposition weekly 
XX1st Century printed articles last October about alleged corruption by 
President Nazarbaev, the publication's editor, Bigeldy Gabdullin, was 
charged with ``harming the honor and dignity of the President.'' On 
April 3, Yermurat Bapi, editor of the opposition weekly SolDat, was 
convicted of ``publicly insulting the dignity and honor of the 
President.'' The court also ordered that the print run of SolDat in 
which the offending article appeared be destroyed.
  Mr. Bapi, who was sentenced to one year in jail and ordered to pay 
$280 in court expenses, was immediately pardoned under a presidential 
amnesty. Still, his conviction remains on the books, which will prevent 
him from traveling abroad, among other restrictions. Mr. Bapi is 
appealing the verdict. As for Mr. Gabdullin, the prosecutor's office 
issued a press release on April 6 stating that it had dropped the case 
against him due to ``the absence of [a] crime,'' although his newspaper 
has not yet received formal confirmation.

[[Page 8507]]

  While both editors are currently at liberty, as the Committee to 
Protect Journalists (CPJ) points out, their newspapers cannot publish 
in Kazakhstan because local printers will not risk angering local 
officials. In an April 17 letter to President Nazarbaev, CPJ concluded 
that ``we remain deeply concerned about your government's frequent use 
of politically-motivated criminal charges to harass opposition 
journalists'' and called on him ``to create an atmosphere in which all 
journalists may work without fear of reprisal.''
  Apart from intimidating individual journalists and publications, 
Kazakhstan's authorities have taken legal action to restrict freedom of 
speech. The country's Senate on April 17 approved a draft media law 
that limits the retransmission of foreign programs and will also 
subject Internet web pages to the same controls as print media. 
Moreover, media outlets can be held responsible for news not obtained 
from official sources. In other words, if the New York Times or CNN 
runs stories Kazakhstan's leadership finds distasteful, Kazakh media 
outlets risk legal sanction for re-running those reports. Considering 
the ongoing investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice into high-
level corruption in Kazakhstan, it is easy to draw inferences about 
what kinds of stories the authorities would eagerly spike. Indeed, 
although Mr. Gabdullin and Bapi were formally prosecuted for articles 
in their newspapers, both had also previously signed an open letter, 
published in the January 15 edition of Roll Call, expressing their 
support for the investigation.
  Mr. Speaker, Kazakh authorities have also stepped up harassment of 
NGOS. The OSCE Center in Almaty, the Washington-based National 
Democratic Institute (NDI), and Internews-Kazakhstan had jointly 
organized public forums in 9 regions of Kazakhstan to educate local 
citizens, media, and interested parties about the proposed amendments 
to the media law. After the law's passage, local organizers of these 
Forums on Mass Media were called in to the Procuracy for 
``conversations.'' Other government agencies which took part in this 
intimidation were the Tax Police and the Financial Police.
  According to OSCE sources, the authorities offered local NGOs 
``friendly'' advice about not working with the OSCE and NDI. In Atyrau, 
one NGO contacted by the Financial Police did not even participate in 
these forums but that did not stop the police from sending a written 
request for information on ``whether or not your organization had 
contacts with the OSCE or NDI in 2000-2001.'' Clearly, the authorities 
are singling out NGOs which maintain contacts with the OSCE and NDI and 
warning them about the possible consequences. In some instances, the 
authorities have made good on the implied threat and opened tax 
investigations into NGOs, seizing their documents and even computers, 
as happened in Almaty and Karaganda. This campaign is a blatant attack 
on the activities of the OSCE, of which Kazakhstan is a participating 
State, and other international organizations which promote 
demoncratization.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, to round out a very depressing picture, 
Kazakhstan's parliament is reportedly working towards the adoption of 
amendments to the law on religion that will severely limit freedom of 
conscience. The draft provisions would require at least 50 members for 
a religious association to be registered (the law currently requires 
10). In order to engage in ``missionary activity,'' which would involve 
merely sharing religious beliefs with others, individuals--citizens or 
not--would have to be registered with the government, and religious 
activity would be permitted only at the site of a religious 
organization, which could bar meetings in rented facilities or even 
private homes. Violation of these provisions could lead to a sentence 
of one-year in prison or even two years of ``corrective labor,'' and to 
the closing of religious organizations.
  These draft amendments to the religion law were introduced in 
Kazakhstan's parliament in early April. According to the U.S. Embassy 
in Almaty, no date has been scheduled for discussion of the legislation 
though it is expected the measure will be considered before the current 
session ends in June. The U.S. Government, the OSCE, and other 
international agencies have expressed concern about the possible 
restriction of religious liberty, and there is reason to fear the 
worst.
  In recent months, the attitude underlying these draft amendments has 
already had a real impact on believers. American citizens who did 
humanitarian work in several cities in Kazakhstan have been harassed, 
intimidated and eventually deported. The formal cause of their 
expulsion was violation of administrative regulations but one official 
told an American the real reason was because they were Christians. In 
one particularly brutal, ugly case, Americans who had been told to 
leave the country were preparing to do so when the authorities brought 
them back from the airport so they could be videotaped for TV 
broadcasts portraying them as engaging in various sorts of subversive 
activities. An American family preparing to leave Ust-Kamenorgorsk was 
harassed by a Kazakh security official who threatened to spend the 
entire night in their tiny apartment to make sure they left. It took 
several hours before he could be persuaded to leave, despite the fact 
that his presence was frightening a pregnant American woman.
  Jehovah's Witnesses have also reported stepped-up harassment and 
intimidation. Over the past few months, central and local media have 
been attacking Jehovah's Witnesses, who are depicted as religious 
extremists. In one bizarre case, according to the Witnesses, a 
television station broadcast video footage of Islamic terrorists, who 
were described as Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as footage of a police 
raid on a meeting held in a private home.
  Kazakhstan's new Administrative Violation Code, which went into 
effect in February, allows the suspension or prohibition of religious 
organizations for evading registration or for violating assembly rules. 
This has already been used to suspend the activity of a group of 
Jehovah's Witnesses in Kyzyl-Orda. A similar case is pending in Taraz.
  Just today, May 16, Keston News Service reports that authorities have 
declared a Baptist church in the town of Kulsary (Atyrau region) 
illegal and ordered it to stop all meetings, claiming that it may not 
function until it is registered. In fact, Kazakh law does not ban 
activity by religious communities without registration, but the 
regional prosecutor upheld the ban. Church leaders intend to appeal the 
decision, but local lawyers are afraid to take such a case.
  Keston further reports that on April 10, the authorities in Kyzylorda 
fined a Baptist church 7,750 tenge (about $53) and suspended its 
activities until it obtains registration. In February, police had 
raided a Kazakh-language service at that church, demanding that 
participants show their identity documents and write statements about 
the gathering. They confiscated religious writings in Kazakh and 
Russian, and took five people, including the leader of the service, 
Erlan Sarsenbaev, to the police station. According to the Baptists, the 
police told them ``During the Soviet times, believers like you were 
shot. Now you are feeling at peace, but we will show you.'' When 
Sarsenbaev refused to write a statement, police officers ``began to hit 
him on his neck, abdomen and head with a plastic bottle filled with 
water.'' Finally, they forged his signature, and wrote the statement on 
his behalf.
  As President Bush recently said, ``the newly independent republics of 
Central Asia impose troubling limits on religious expression and 
missionary work.'' This trend in Kazakhstan is especially disturbing 
because despite the consistent consolidation of presidential power and 
general crackdown on opposition and dissent, relative religious freedom 
had been one of the bright spots. It seems this bright spot is about to 
disappear.
  Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago, Erlan Idrisov, Minister of Foreign 
Affairs of Kazakhstan, visited Washington. In his public speaking 
engagements, he focused on Kazakhstan's emphasis on stability and its 
desire for good relations with its neighbors. These are understandable 
priorities which the United States has every reason to support. But 
Minister Idrisov simply discounted charges of human rights problems, 
arguing on May 2 at the Carnegie Endowment that the above-mentioned 
Washington Post editorial is ``not the final word'' on the human rights 
situation in his country.
  Minister Idrisov may disagree with any Washington Post editorial, if 
he likes. But when you consider many other sources, such as the State 
Department's report on human rights practices, the Committee to Protect 
Journalists (which last year named President Nazarbaev one of the 
world's ten worst enemies of the media), and the OSCE Center in Almaty, 
the overall impression is clear and indisputable. Despite official 
Kazakh claims about progress, the human rights situation is poor and 
threatens to get worse. If President Nazarbaev wants to change that 
impression and convince people that he is sincere about wanting to 
democratize his country, he must take concrete steps to do so. The time 
is long past when we could take his assurances at face value.

                          ____________________